Orphan X

57 Another Lit Window

A few more pounds on the frame, his cheeks even fuller, the ruddy complexion more pronounced.

Evan’s words came out hoarse. “Hello, Charles.”

Van Sciver strolled leisurely around the loft. “There are 367,159 people in the United States alone who share your given name,” he said. “That’s one in every 854 Americans.” The words came across the line on a slight delay, unhitched from the movements of Charles’s mouth, lending the conversation an otherworldly effect. “Of course, you lost that clunky last name of yours years ago. Well before Oslo. So it’s been a challenge.”

“I’m glad I’m not named Ignatius.”

Charles smirked. He stopped before Danika and looked down at her corpse. The dark puddle beneath her head slowly expanded. “They’re so helpless, and you’re so strong,” he said. “That’s your weak spot, Evan, always has been. Your soft, soft heart.”

Evan thought about that authentic fake passport properly issued through the State Department. About being tracked through those fifteen telephone-switch destinations around the world. About why Slatcher never bothered to swap out the Scion — because no authorities were tracking him.

“You’re not freelance,” Evan said. “You’re government-sanctioned.”

“At least as much as we ever were,” Charles said. “But yes, I’m still inside, if that’s what you mean.”

“Who’s running you?”

“Who’s running me?” Again Charles gave that cocky grin, the one that brought Evan back to cracked asphalt basketball courts, mac-and-cheese dinners, the overpopulated bedrooms of the Pride House Group Home. “No one runs me. It’s mine.”

“What’s yours?”

“Everything.”

The realization struck Evan, roiling his insides. Lies stacked on top of lies until the tatters of his past avalanched down on him. “The Orphan Program. It was never discontinued.”

“Its purpose has shifted. But I’m the top dog.”

“How many of us are left?”

“Enough,” Charles said.

“How’d you get on my trail?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t imagine how hard it was to track down the Nowhere Man. We designed a data-mining program to parse crime-scene reports. It hit on William Chambers’s murder. We got onto Morena Aguilar from there.”

“What tipped you?”

“The target raised a red flag. Dirty cop, lotta allegations — right in your wheelhouse. Then the forensics. The rifling showed he’d been shot with a 1911, your preferred pistol for years, though the ammo threw us off at first. You generally use hollow points, but you were throwing 230-grain hardball that night. Then I realized — the crowded neighborhood, you wanted to go subsonic so the bullet wouldn’t have a sound signature. But what really gave it away was the money left behind to pay the girl’s rent. What’s a broke Salvadoran girl doing with hundred-dollar bills?”

Careless, Evan thought.

“We wanted to keep her in the dark in case we needed to use her later,” Charles said. “We just never expected her to toss a real client into the mix so fast.”

“Because that interfered with the fake client you set up.”

Charles toed Danika’s body. “That’s right.”

“You wanted to position somebody close to get an inside line on my location.”

“You know how it is with someone like you. We needed to control your position so we could execute a coordinated attack in a well-scouted location.”

“Like at the motel.”

“That’s right. And even so, look how that went. That’s why we switched it up, grabbed a pawn so we could move you around the board.” His eyes flicked again to the body at his feet. “We needed plenty of notice for mission planning. We were hoping you’d spend the night at the loft, but you’re like a shark. Always moving.”

“Where’d you find Danika?”

“Oh, we had an eye on a number of candidates, but we were waiting until we got a bead on you. We’d been watching Danika for some time. She seemed the best fit.”

It took a moment for Evan to process that one. “So that’s why you’re after me?” he finally asked. “My pro bono work?”

“Of course not.” Charles pinched his eyes, a show of frustration. “We are after you because of the information in your head. You’re not a safe asset to have out there in circulation.”

“Neither are you.”

“I’m not out there in circulation.”

“I was told you turned.”

Charles looked genuinely taken aback. “I never turned.”

“The summer after Oslo, I was assigned to kill you. I refused.”

“Two of us were assigned to kill you that summer. It was the first time they ever let Orphans work together. Your handler lied to you. You were always the target. We just couldn’t find you. Until now.”

“Then why…?”

It struck Evan there in the dim glow of the monitors. Jack had sent Evan the picture of Charles knowing that he’d recognize him, knowing that he would go underground before he’d kill a fellow Orphan. The Smoke Contingency.

Jack had given him the fake assignment to warn him and get him off the grid. If Evan had known the truth, he would have gone up against the Orphans and the whole goddamned government. He would’ve gotten himself killed.

Realization flickered across Charles’s face, and then that smile sprang back into place. Phone to his ear, he paced around Danika’s corpse. “Oh, that’s rich. You didn’t know. Why did you think Jack Johns went down? For trying to protect you.”

Evan reached behind him for the chair, lowered himself into it. He thought of Jack at the dinner table, twirling linguine around his fork. The hard part isn’t turning you into a killer. The hard part is keeping you human. His tense voice before their fateful meet beneath the Jefferson Memorial. There may have been a leak on this end. I don’t want to be drawn out. I’m watching my movements.

Jack had broken countless protocols to protect Evan. He’d known the risk he was taking. And he’d taken it.

Evan’s grief over Jack’s death had never left; it remained, woven through his core. It shifted now, fissuring the foundations, stealing the breath from his chest. His mouth opened, but no words came out.

The only glimmer of gratitude he could find was that Charles could not see his reaction. But Charles sensed it. He turned neatly on his heel, eyeing the hidden camera in the hanging cabinets.

Evan forced out the words. “Why did they want to kill me?”

“You don’t get it, Evan. It wasn’t personal. The drones changed everything. Anytime the State Department wants, they can click a button and a truckload of extremists explodes halfway around the world. Why deal with human error and all the diplomatic risks that come with a program like ours? They don’t need us anymore. They haven’t for years. They started wrapping us up.”

“You mean letting us wrap one another up,” Evan said.

“That’s right. And they still are. Having us eliminate the ones who are high-risk.”

“We’re all high-risk, Charles. That’s what we are.”

“Right,” Charles said. “But some personality profiles predicted higher likelihood of defiance.”

“Like mine.”

“Like yours.”

“So if I were the type who’d agree to kill you and if you were the type who’d refuse to kill me, we’d be on opposite sides of this camera right now.”

“Well, you can’t argue they got it wrong, can you?”

“The new purpose of the Orphan Program is assassinating Orphans? Can’t you see where it’s headed, Charles? They’ll have us keep killing one another—”

“Until there’s one left,” Charles said.

“Doesn’t that concern you?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because”—Charles stepped closer yet to the camera—“I’ll be the one.”

“Then what?” Evan asked.

For once Van Sciver had no reply.

Evan waited, and sure enough Van Sciver took another step toward the camera. Evan willed him to take one more, but Charles remained there, glaring resolutely into the lens.

“No matter how long it takes,” Charles said, “I will find you.”

“Good-bye, Charles,” Evan said.

Charles’s face changed, and he flinched an instant before Evan clicked the mouse, detonating the charge hidden in the camera.

The screen went to static, the entire circuit of hidden cameras fried by the explosion. For a long time, Evan sat and watched the snow as if it were a code he was meant to decipher.

He thought about Charles’s distance from the small charge and wondered if the kill radius had been sufficient.

When at last he stood, his legs felt weak. He urged them to carry him into the kitchen, where he shook two jiggers of Jean-Marc XO until his hands stuck to the aluminum shaker. He poured the vodka into a glass, dropped in a stick of manzanilla olives, and drifted across to the balcony facing Downtown.

The questions — and possibilities — were endless. Evan shared a secret most-wanted list neither with armed robbers nor men who wore turbans and beards, but with individuals who had training and skills given to them by the very government now seeking to eradicate them. Which meant he might have allies in addition to foes. Who else was on that hit list, and who else was behind it?

Charles had claimed that the Orphan Program lived on under him in some new form, downsized but deadly. That much Evan believed. Right now it was devoted to terminating former Orphans considered to present a risk. Evan believed that as well. But what other uses Charles might have for the program once he was sitting behind the controls, that was anyone’s guess.

Sipping his vodka, Evan leaned against the railing, peering across Los Angeles. Evan’s hunters were out there somewhere among those glittering lights, and he was here, and they couldn’t find him. Not tonight.

Tonight he was just another lit window among millions.